Partly I was honing my self-consciousness into a torture device, sharp and efficient enough to last me the rest of my life.

The general plot of life is sometimes shaped by the different ways genuine intelligence combines with equally genuine ignorance.

Does something which exists on the edge have no true relevance to the stable center, or does it, by being on the edge, become a part of the edge and thus a part of the boundary, the definition which gives the whole its shape?

I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever, a constant by which everything else could be measured. I know now that this isn’t so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things.

Through [my friends] I discovered what it was to love people. There was an art to it...which was not really all that different from the love that is necessary in the making of art. It required the effort of always seeing them for themselves and not as I wished them to be.

Partly I was honing my self-consciousness into a torture device, sharp and efficient enough to last me the rest of my life.

Sometimes the briefest moments capture us, force us to take them in, and demand that we live the rest of our lives in reference to them.